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Demand for care at home is growing because of the increase in life expectancy, an ageing population and the chronic conditions that often accompany longevity. Daytime care at home services have been widely reported on, but less is known about overnight care at home. This paper aims to gather evidence about overnight social care for older adults in their homes.

Recent studies were identified through searches in three electronic databases. Studies published in English between January 2016 and June 2022 exploring overnight care at home for older adults were eligible for inclusion. An additional Google search identified home care services within the UK currently providing overnight support.

The review retrieved five relevant papers, highlighting the paucity of research in this area. A narrative review of the literature identified common themes that suggested domiciliary night care staff play an integral role in meeting the overnight care and support needs of older adults who wish to be cared for at home. Despite the limited evidence base in this area, the Google search for UK domiciliary services who provide overnight support identified several active programmes.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scoping review exploring the provision of overnight social care to older adults in their own homes. The review highlights the need for further research to inform commissioning and practice development.

The Healthy at Home (H@H) is an older adult day program that is in Toronto in Ontario, Canada. This is an integrated health and social care (IHSC) program that seeks to address the social isolation and health needs of a highly vulnerable older adult population living in the north Toronto communities. These are Russian-speaking Jewish older adult immigrants. The case provides a detailed description of the factors that enabled a diverse group of health and social care organizations to integrate their respective services to address the health and social care needs of their clients using a culturally appropriate and trauma-informed lens.

A case description comprised of key informant interviews, and a focus group was undertaken of representatives from health and social care organizations serving clients in the north Toronto area.

This case description identified eleven integration factors that enabled organizations to provide integrated care using a culturally appropriate and trauma-informed lens, and they include developing an aligned vision and goals, communications, an inter-organization culture of inter-dependence, champions, pre-existing relationships, and champions. In addition, operating in the not-for-profit sector, sector differences, enabling public policies and a strong sense of community have influenced integration of services across the organizational partners to serve its high-risk client group.

This case description lends insights into how IHSC can be leveraged to provide culturally appropriate and trauma-informed care for highly vulnerable client/patient populations. A lesson learnt is that social care partners can engage in successful integration leadership in joint health and social care integration efforts.

This study aimed at exploring support for older people in protracted displacement in Nigeria, emphasising the available support and the gap in the support provided to them.

Qualitative interviews were used to collect data from ten displaced older people in New-Kuchingoro internally displaced persons (IDP) camp Abuja, Nigeria. The collected data were analysed thematically with NVivo 12.

Results show that older people received material, emotional and psychological supports from their families, neighbours, friends, religious organisations and non-governmental organisations. Several gaps were identified in the support provided to displaced older people. For example, their special nutritional or medical needs were neglected, and their support was primarily material, sporadic and spontaneous, as there is no existing framework guiding the care and support of older people in displacement.

This study provides a foundation for further research on older people in displacement, an area that has received minimal scholarly attention.

The paper recommends that researchers and displaced persons’ care providers should pay more attention to the peculiar support needs of this less visible vulnerable group and adopt the internal displacement policy for the long-term protection of older people in displacement.

Older people in displacement remain less visible as humanitarian aid programmes and research focus more on women and children. This lack of attention may put older people in displacement at more risk as their peculiar needs may not be met. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the gap in support for older people in displacement in Nigeria.

This article draws upon our perspective as academic-practitioners working in the fields of food insecurity, food systems, and inequality to comment, in the early stages of the pandemic and associated lockdown, on the empirical and ethical implications of COVID-19 for socio-economic inequalities in access to food in the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the profound insecurity of large segments of the UK population, an insecurity itself the product of a decade of “austerity” policies. Increased unemployment, reduced hours, and enforced self-isolation for multiple vulnerable groups is likely to lead to an increase in UK food insecurity, exacerbating diet-related health inequalities. The social and economic crisis associated with the pandemic has exposed the fragility of the system of food charity which, at present, is a key response to growing poverty. A vulnerable food system, with just-in-time supply chains, has been challenged by stockpiling. Resultant food supply issues at food banks, alongside rapidly increasing demand and reduced volunteer numbers, has undermined many food charities, especially independent food banks. In the light of this analysis, we make a series of recommendations. We call for an immediate end to the five week wait for Universal Credit and cash grants for low income households. We ask central and local government to recognise that many food aid providers are already at capacity and unable to adopt additional responsibilities. The government's – significant – response to the economic crisis associated with COVID-19 has underscored a key principle: it is the government's responsibility to protect population health, to guarantee household incomes, and to safeguard the economy. Millions of households were in poverty before the pandemic, and millions more will be so unless the government continues to protect household incomes through policy change.

This study aims to examine the recent literature on health-promoting behavior, health needs and associated factors among older adults.

An massive search of five databases involving documents in the past decade was commenced.

This review showed a significant relationship between older adults’ demographic characteristics (marital status, income, chronic disease, education level and smoking status) and health-promoting behaviors. This review showed that older adults with a high level of education, high income, chronic diseases and smoker and married older adults are associated with better health-promoting behaviors.

The result of the current review supports the Pender Health Promotion Model that individual personal characteristics can affect the level of engagement in health-promoting behaviors. Assessing the health-promoting behaviors of older adults can help in identifying their health needs.

Needs change as people get older. Procuring resources to satisfy them can generate anguish and insecurities in consumers due to their financial situation. This study aims to analyze the relationship between age and financial stress among Mexican adults and estimate the age of their maximum financial stress.

This study is based on constructing a financial stress indicator using the confirmatory factor analysis and linear regression models with a quadratic term, employing data from the National Survey on Financial Inclusion 2021.

Results show that the relationship between age and financial stress follows a quadratic pattern, with a maximum level at age 56, which varies according to sex, marital status, number of dependents, education and regions. These findings interest financial product designers and policy developers who aim to improve consumers' well-being.

Longitudinal studies and indicators, such as financial fragility, are needed to facilitate refining models over time.

There is no evidence of studies that have addressed the age of maximum financial stress in Latin America. Doing so is relevant because identifying the stages in life when adults are most vulnerable to financial stress helps assess its causes more precisely, thus mitigating its adverse effects.

This qualitative study set within Northern Ireland aims to explore professional perspectives on the application of evidence-informed practice to the adult safeguarding threshold screening process.

Data was gathered from seven social workers in one health and social care trust area, who perform the designated adult protection role, through individual semi-structured interviews in one region of Northern Ireland. The interview schedule comprised of a series of questions examining the role of the designated adult protection officer and included three vignettes (Appendix). A thematic analysis was undertaken using NVIVO software.

This paper reports main findings under the themes of: the role of the designated adult protection officer, threshold decision-making, evidence-informed practice and service improvement. One of the main findings was that professionals viewed the current process as too bureaucratic, and there was a desire to engage in more preventive safeguarding in collaboration with service users. There was a need to promote awareness of evidence-informed practice as it applies to the threshold screening process. Furthermore, the study raised the question of the need to consider the application of models or methods of assessment to the threshold screening process.

This in-depth exploration of the role of designated adult protection officers in Northern Ireland provides a valuable insight into the complexity involved in managing adult safeguarding referrals and investigations. This study adds to the existing knowledge base, identifies potential service improvements and highlights the gap in evidence-based practice as it applies to the threshold screening process. Threshold screening of adult safeguarding referrals remains a subjective process and is open to interpretation and differences in professional judgement. The study highlights the need to consider the application of quality improvement methodology to the threshold screening assessment and the need to promote the exchange of safeguarding knowledge.

The reality of emergency preparedness for older adults has not been quite satisfactory in many regions. This paper aimed to study how to improve emergency preparedness for older adults in the viewpoint of emergency culture.

A systematic literature review was used to contrast internationally voiced emergency preparedness (i.e. the principles of emergency preparedness) with culturally adapted emergency preparedness (e.g. values, games, arts, outdoor activities, etc.) via international organizations in both developing and developed countries. For data flow, the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses was also used in a supplementary way.

An encompassing tenet states that all stakeholders need to divert the internationally voiced emergency preparedness into culturally adapted emergency preparedness while addressing the effects of culture, self-preparedness, integration, diversity, tailored intervention, etc.

This paper has probed into the frame of emergency preparedness for older adults more comprehensively than the previous literature. In doing so, the aspect of emergency culture has been much supported.

This paper aims to present commentary on adult safeguarding designated officers’ (nominated senior staff members in the Health Service Executive and its funded services) in Ireland readiness for online learning and their perception of the blended approach used in their training and considers the implications of this for practice.

In total, 233 designated officers were surveyed. A self-administered online survey comprising of two instruments was used. The questionnaire combines two previously validated tools measuring readiness for online learning and perceptions of blended learning. Minor modifications were made to account for local circumstance and language. Demographic questions relevant to the survey population were added. The response rate was 49%.

Designated officers regarded specified competencies for online learning as important to very important with highest importance placed in time management. Designated officers expressed they were confident to very confident in their ability to accomplish all competencies in online learning. The highest confidence was in the technical competencies. Designated officers are demonstrating high readiness for online learning. Designated officers reported positively on online contributions and on blended learning workload. The scores indicate positive perceptions of the blended learning experience. Responses to an open-ended question were largely positive with some suggestions for improvement made.

Findings have helped inform planning and development of the Health Service Executive’s adult safeguarding training for designated officers with changes made since this survey was undertaken.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first time a survey was undertaken of designated officers in Ireland with a view to improving safeguarding training. Recommendations for adaptions to the blended designated officer programme were proposed and subsequently accepted and implemented.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between the perceived neighborhood walkable environment (PNWE), neighborhood interaction (NI) and residents’ mental health, with a focus on examining differences among residents of different age groups.

Using an electronic survey questionnaire, data on PNWE, NI and mental health were collected from 1,159 residents across 205 communities in Shanghai, China. Our study utilized a structural equation modeling (SEM), employing the maximum likelihood estimation method. The structural equation model was fitted using the MPLUS software.

The mental health of young and middle-aged adults is generally poor, and they are at higher risk of depression than children and older adults. The effects of PNWE and NI on the mental health of residents varied among different age groups. As residents get older, their mental health is more affected by the PNWE. In addition, the influence of the PNWE on children and older adults’ mental health is direct and not mediated by NI. For young and middle-aged adults, the influence of the PNWE on their mental health needs to be mediated by NI.

This study marks the first examination of the relationship between PNWE, NI and mental health among different age groups of residents in China. The findings of this research can assist policymakers in gaining a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which PNWE affects mental health. Furthermore, it can contribute to the development of more targeted walkable environment designs aimed at enhancing mental health among various age groups.